Friday, April 24, 2015

Some of the one-room schoolhouses in Geary County jump
out at you as you drive by, Pleasant View, Spring Valley, Kickapoo, and
Brookside, for example. Others, like Wetzel, take some serious GPS guided searching
and occasional blind luck. In preparation for our tour on the remaining
one-room schoolhouses in Geary County we used a 1905 map, Google, GPS, and land
descriptions to try to find the remaining buildings.And on our initial search on the country
roads we’d thought we’d found Wetzel.

What we thought was Wetzel was a small, yet tall,
stone building with what looked like a school bell mounted on a pole outside.
We also had issues because the online map we used to track addresses and GPS
was WRONG. (Lesson: always double-double check your research before driving
halfway across the county in search of something.)

After we returned from a day of what seemed like a
game of hide-and-seek of Geary County schoolhouses we discovered that in fact
what we thought was Wetzel, was not at all.This prompted another jaunt into the county in search of the illusive
schoolhouse.We did finally find it, but
it took driving north not south on Clark’s Creek Road. Going south, the
schoolhouse is half-hidden in a grove of evergreens.

This schoolhouse is small, unimposing, and located on
a hill overlooking Clarks Creek Road. The district was formed in 1867, and the stone
building was likely built not long after that. The stone building was in use
until 1956 when the district was annexed into District 14-Berry School, just a
little ways north.

There was a time that class was held in another
building while Wetzel underwent repairs. These days we hear about delays in
construction, and projects taking six months, or sometimes a year, longer than
originally planned. Meanwhile, students usually attend class in another school
or district building. It was a little different for Wetzel students.

In 1914, lightning struck the building. While the
stone survived, the roof and all other wood on or in the building were
destroyed. The school received a $541 insurance payment and they went to work
rebuilding their schoolhouse. However, construction was not finished by the
time school started and so class was held in the horse barn for about a month. I
wonder if the horses got to attend class as well?

We interviewed Nellie Kramer Smith about her time at
Wetzel School; Nellie started school in 1926 and spent all eight grades at
Wetzel.Unlike many children in other
school districts Nellie did not attend school with siblings. Her brother was
seven years older than her so she went to school alone.She did have a close friend that attended
Wetzel with her, Hazel Turnbull.

According to Nellie, children, it seems have not
changed much.We know all school kids
are guilty of daring, double-dog-daring, and triple-dog-daring, and children at
one-room schools were no different. Nellie and Hazel were dared by other
students to put their tongues on the railing by the door to the school in the
middle of winter. I know many of you are cringing right now, but Nellie and
Hazel did it, thinking that it would be no big deal.

But Nellie remembered, “We put our tongues on it and
we were bawling by the time we got off there. That stuck right to us, it was so
cold that day. . . the teacher come out and poured cold water, that’s all they
had, she poured cold water over that rod, on our tongues and on the rod to get
us off, and we had the sorest tongues for two weeks afterword.”

Many of the memories that Nellie shared with us were
about the games that children played. She shared memories of playing baseball,
shinny, Andy-I-over, fox and geese, and pull-me-away. Pull-me-away was a game
where one group of kids hung onto the stone fence around the schoolyard and
another group tried to pull them off. If they let go then you were on the other
team.

Playtime wasn’t the only thing that Nellie remembered.
Wetzel, like many schools today, had the experience of outbreaks of illness
among the children. When one child gets lice, they all get lice; or for many of
us, when one child got chicken pox they all got chicken pox. There was a chicken
pox outbreak at Wetzel School while Nellie was a student and the district was
ready to close the school down until the disease ran its course.

Another problem schools experienced before the
advancement of vaccines was polio. Jacky Swenson, a student the same time as
Nellie, was playing on the stone fence around the school yard and he fell and
hurt his leg. Not long after that Jacky came down with polio and the disease
affected that side of his body and he was crippled after that. In the days
before the polio vaccine, it was a common belief that a fall would bring on
polio.

The school records for Wetzel show varying attendance
over the years. For a few years in the
1930s there were over 50 school-age children in the district; Mrs. Ralph Munson
remembered “when enrollment was so large that the children had to sit three to
a double desk.” As the years went by though, Wetzel’s enrollment, like most of
the other rural schools, dwindled, and in 1955 the district voted to annex. Wetzel
School disorganized February 16, 1956 and the school district was annexed to
District 14-Berry School. The building and land are now private property.

Wetzel
School on Clark’s Creek Rd. in 2014.

If you have any information, photos, letters, report
cards, or stories from your days at a one-room schoolhouse that you would like
to share please contact Sarah at the museum, or stop by. We’d love to record
your memories. 530 N. Adams or call 785-238-1666.

Friday, April 17, 2015

The Gordon Beauty Shop was open for 50 years in Junction
City, and during that time the owner, widow Mary Ellen Gordon, saw styles come
and go, adapted to new beauty techniques, and incorporated expanding technology
in the business. Mary Ellen was a widow with two daughters, Vivian and Amy
Jane, when she came to Junction City in 1923. Later that year, Mary Ellen
opened a beauty shop at 120 W. 4th in the west apartment on the
ground floor. Not only did she use this space for her business, but she and her
daughters lived in the space as well. In the salon space, private cubicles were
curtained off so customers getting facials could have privacy.

By March 1928, she bought a home at 115 W. 4th
street where she continued to run her beauty shop. At 115 W 4th, the
rooms upstairs were made into an apartment and the ground floor served as the
beauty shop.

In the early years of her store, Mary Ellen used
rainwater that she collected in a cistern until it was prohibited by law due to
new concerns about public health. While using the cistern she pumped the water
into the building by hand before heating it in a teakettle on a special one
burner gas plate.

In the early years of her store, facials were an
important part of business. Not just confined to the face, facials treated the
neck, arms and hands as well. But Mary Ellen was primarily sought after for her
expertise in marceling. A marcel was a hair style invented by M. Marcel to
imitate the natural wave in hair, which was particularly popular in the 1920s and
30s. This style was done with a heated iron. The iron was first tested on a
strip of newsprint before the hair was lifted with a comb and the first
impression made, little more than an inch from the part of the hair. Then the
iron was turned in a flat motion and held loosely in the hair while the comb
guided the direction the wave would take. These two movements were repeated all
over the head until the hair was waved.

Mary Ellen took great pride in the finished product of
her marcel. She waved not only the top layer of hair, as many marcels were
done, but every layer of hair. When done correctly, a marcel could be combed
and brushed without coming undone. In
1928, Mary Ellen charged 75 cents for a marcel, and $1.25 for both a wash and a
marcel. She would do a retrace for 25
cents—which refreshed the marcel at the top. Finger waves were 50 cents and a
shampoo and water wave cost $1.00 and perms were $3.00.

Before the invention of the cold wave, permanent waves
(perms) were done by a machine that resembled a medieval torture device. The
machine had a set number of curl heaters, so depending on the amount of hair,
would have to be done a few at a time. These heaters were attached to the
machine with long electric wires. To complete the perm process, the hair was
wound on curlers with a protective pad next to the scalp. The heaters were then
clamped over the curls. The time of heating varied from 7 to 20 minutes
according to the machine and texture of the hair. Great care had to be taken to
keep the heaters up and away from the scalp in order to avoid burning and even
unintentional electric shock!

To see one of these early permanent machines, stop by the
Geary County Historical Society and check out the new 1950s exhibit: “He Didn’t
Wear a Top Hat.” Open Tuesday-Sunday,
1-4pm. And on April 26, stop by the museum for our first Classic Car Show! A
great time to see some classic cars and learn a little 1950s history while
you’re at it. Please contact the museum for more information at 785-238-1666.

Friday, April 10, 2015

Around 1910 tourist travel in our
wonderful state had increased and several associations realized there was a
need for visitors to drive from one end of the state to the other without
getting lost in a wheat field. This kind of travel would require a system of
cross-state highways that linked Kansas with other states and provided
travelers with the necessities en route. Up to this point these requirements
were only being met by private individuals and private initiatives. The route
was first marked between Junction City and Salina, and then in 1911 it was
extended to create a link between Kansas City and Colorado Springs. This route
came to be known as the Golden Belt Road, and became one of the most important
of seven highways that crossed Kansas by the end of 1911.

The Golden Belt Highway got its name
from the band or belt of yellow paint on roadside telephone poles. These yellow
belts guided and reassured travelers in the 1920s that they were still
following the path they intended to. These belts marked the Golden Belt
Highway, now Highway 40, all the way across Kansas. These bands were painted by
members of the Geary County Automobile Club.

The club was formed on June 6th
in 1913 and had approximately forty members to its name. At their suggestion an
advisory board was named with one member from each township in the county and
two from the city. The matter of painting signs on the poles throughout the
county on the Golden Belt Highway was taken up at the first meeting. Twenty men
volunteered their services and went out the following Monday to paint the
yellow rings around the poles on the route.

Very soon this highway connected
Kansas to other major highways across the country including the Old Trails
Highway to the Atlantic Coast and the Trail to the Sunset out of Chicago.
Eventually the Golden Belt became part of a national highway known as Pikes
Peak Ocean to Ocean Highway to advertise its tourist attractions.

By 1924 the American Association of
State Highway Officials stepped in. They recommended a new country wide system
of numbering highways. It was decided that roads going from east to west be
given even numbers with chief routes assigned numbers 10, 20, 30, 40, etc.
North to south roads would be given odd numbers with main roads ending with 1
or 5. The success of the numbered system was immediate and overwhelming.

Highway 40 is mentioned in the “WPA
Guide to 1930s Kansas” which in addition to facts and historical trivia boasted
some of the best travel information. These guides were researched and written
by unemployed Americans, the WPA (Works Progress Administration) writer’s
project which kept these people busy producing guides to all 48 states. The
tours highlighted different aspects of the Kansas landscape and tourist
attractions. For example, Tour 3 started in Kansas City and headed west on
Highway 40 through Topeka, Junction City, and on to Weskan. The trip would take
you 451.1 miles from the Missouri line.

As you travel along old Highway 40,
once named the Golden Belt Highway, you are actually following some of the same
route that was used in the settlement of this country.

Henry Harrison (H.H.)
Ziegler was the president of the Geary County Automobile Club

Geary County Museums

The Museum is open Tuesday-Sunday 1-4 and is closed for holidays.There are three floors of exhibits, both permanent and rotating. We have a wonderful gift shop where you can buy trinkets for yourself or others. The Museum building is available for rent, email for more information. We have three Satellite sites available upon request.